Entrepreneurship is a word that has been coming and going for the past few years, especially after the embarking of Covid-19. People no longer wish to work for others and feel the need to take control of their lives, start their own businesses and achieve financial freedom. According to Investopedia, 25% of the new businesses go bankrupt in the first two years, while 45% don’t make it to 5 years. You can read the full story here.

The above statistics prove that being an entrepreneur is not as easy as it may look. The high number of failing individuals means it is the ordinary people who are going bankrupt. This, however, could change with the proper education and practice.

Starting such training from childhood means the individuals will have loads of time and energy to invest in themselves and turn into successful future entrepreneurs.

In this article, we are going to take a deeper look at what entrepreneurship is, what are the essential skills for an entrepreneur to possess, and how we help children enter the realms of entrepreneurship.

What Is Entrepreneurship?

Before moving on further, let us take a brief look at what entrepreneurship is and explore some of the features of an entrepreneur.

Stanford University describes entrepreneurship as the attempt of one or more individuals to embark on a journey of establishing a new business. This is often tangled with bringing new ideas to the table. Becoming an entrepreneur will bring unmatching rewards, provided the entrepreneurs do not fail on their journey. Having said that, it is also worth mentioning that, similarly, all the risks also fall upon the shoulders of the entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are vital players in the economy of their country. They begin their journey with minimum requirements and start creating wealth. Some of such businesses can also trade with customers across the world, adding even more value to their economy. They are also able to foresee what needs and new markets will be developing in the years to come and so prepare their agendas accordingly. This leads to less scarcity in such major fields in the future.

Today entrepreneurship has become one of the integral parts of the production economy. It is the entrepreneurs that are able to start various businesses and create jobs for the rest of their community. Many of their businesses also require a team of technicians to attend to the production lines.

The Necessary Skills For Entrepreneurs

Similar to any other human activity, becoming an entrepreneur also requires a group of skillsets. Not all experts agree on the exact same requirements but what are known to be the main cornerstones are Leadership & Team Building Skills, Business Knowledge, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, and Networking and Communication Skills.

It is a fact that most people possess many of the above skills in their arsenal, but it is also a fact that most people are not entrepreneurs, so the question that arises is why?

The truth is that while many individuals may be capable in one or more of these skills, they have either not received enough training and education to direct them in the right direction or lack the rest of the pieces of this puzzle.

We have deeply discussed each of the skills in their own article, so make sure to check those as well, but let’s take a look at them here too.

Business Knowledge

The first thing to consider when starting something new is acquiring some basic knowledge about the dos and don’ts of it, and entrepreneurship is no exception. Entrepreneurs are basically creating a business from absolute scratch, so it makes perfect sense for them to learn the basics of business knowledge before jumping with both feet into the pool.

These are the information that is necessary for not only starting a business but also keeping it running and later expanding it. An entrepreneur must know their way around how to get started in the world of business and how to lay plans out for the future. They must know how to turn their innovative idea into a product or service that is demanded by the market and how this should be shown to the people – this step is what we typically know as marketing and advertisement.

But that is not it. They must also be able to estimate their costs and incomes, find the necessary financial support, and manage their taxes, so naturally, they will need to have some sense of finance and accounting as well. Entrepreneurship also requires being in touch with partners and customers. Business communication is key when it comes to stepping into a new business, especially in one where there is a heavy competition going against you.

Many entrepreneurs also tend to use corporate social responsibilities, especially those related to environmental causes, as an advertising tool to help stimulate their customers’ social responsibilities and get them to lean towards their products. Take Green Products as an example. These are often products that contain recycled material and create less toxic waste once they are fully consumed. Such products have proven to be favored by the majority of consumers.

Another must-have skill in entrepreneurship is the ability to establish an effective code of business ethics and conduct. This is how Investopedia defines this:

A code of ethics in business is a set of guiding principles intended to ensure a business and its employees act with honesty and integrity in all facets of its day-to-day operations and to only engage in acts that promote a benefit to society.

Investopedia

Code of business ethics has also become a significant element in shaping the perspective of customers towards businesses. That is why even well-known multinational companies such as Apple still try to bolden their share of positive efforts for society.

Leadership & Team Building Skills

Gone are the days of putting dry managers in charge of businesses and succeeding. Today, it is proven that for young entrepreneurs to succeed, leadership skills are absolutely crucial.

It is evident that entrepreneurship is not possible alone if the idea is to survive the typhoons and become a major player. This means that the individual who is stepping into entrepreneurship must be a good team builder.

Every business requires a team of professionals who are dedicated to their duties and are interactive. Such teams often consist of people who are excellent critical thinkers, know how to listen for key instructions and are able to organize their work in a way that is most efficient. Building such a team requires certain team-building skills that are not taught in schools and colleges. Young entrepreneurs must learn these on their own, sit for special courses or take the hard road of experience. Lacking such skills in entrepreneurship is like not knowing maths for programming!

Once a good team is built, the leader must know how to make things work. This is where leadership skills come in handy. A great leader knows how to motivate each individual in their team, how to deal with mistakes, and how to create a safe environment for everybody to ensure maximum efficiency. A leader does all that by keeping himself at the front of the work instead of managing his people from a bossy perspective. He would normally be the initiator of hard talks and persuades his team to express themselves when necessary.

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

Critical thinking in problem-solving or another one of those skills that will take many years for one to be able to establish a firm ground. It has become one of the most tactical abilities that set apart employees from one another, managers from one another, and similarly entrepreneurs from one another.

Talking in very basic terms, critical thinking is the ability to receive and gather information about a certain problem by making detailed observations and the environment and the stimuli surrounding that same problem. As the name suggests critical thinking is being able to think and make sense of things during critical moments.

Over the many years since critical thinking was identified and acknowledged as a major mental skill and experts have also mutually agreed that similar to many other Skills, critical thinking can also be learned, improved, and polished using the right tools and activities and in an appropriate period of time. In another article, we have introduced programming as one of the many activities that help boost critical thinking so make sure to check that one out by clicking here.

But where does critical thinking come in handy in entrepreneurship? Well, the truth is young entrepreneurs are very likely to face very unusual circumstances and situations regularly, especially in the first 5 to 10 years of running their businesses. This is a time when their business is under the most pressure and on all fronts including production, marketing, sales, finances, and more. It is during this time that they have to make critical choices that are most suitable for the business with minimum cost.

Without critical thinking, a new business will hit one brick wall after another. This will eventually lead to the erosion of the business and its resources causing it to collapse. 

That is why critical thinking is one of the most important cornerstones when it comes to entrepreneurship. What is important to acknowledge is the fact that critical thinking abilities are not built overnight. This requires years of practice and mentorship

 if anyone is to become a professional critical thinker, they are to dedicate sufficient time and energy and stop assuming this is a god-given skill or that it will automatically improve over time.

Networking & Communication Skills

Now let’s assume an individual has stepped into the path of entrepreneurship for a couple of months now and they have already established a firm proper ground for their business. Order just going to stick two small customers? Would they want to remain a retailer for the rest of the business time? The answer is most probably a big fat no. The aim of starting a business as an entrepreneur is to generate sales and to push the numbers higher and higher they’re after day. This means they will have to move on from b to c style of business two B2B AKA business to business field of work.

Let’s think about it, is selling to a company with 50 employees, not a big fish to catch for a small business? Of course, it is. But the real question here is how is the entrepreneur going to find such clients? Well, there is marketing and digital marketing out there with so many cool-sounding tricks such as sales and sales funnels to help generate such sales but if the business owner does not know a lot of people they will not succeed.

This is where networking and communication skills come in handy. Networking is basically being able to meet new people and discuss business with them well communication is persuading people to follow you through your idea.

Now let’s take a look at an example here. So John has very recently stepped into the realms of entrepreneurship and has started his own business. He sells cute earrings, necklaces and products of starch four ladies. Now John is being invited to this big birthday party of his friend in Vancouver, and John doesn’t know anyone at the party. With communication and networking skills, John is able to easily feel confident at the party, meet so many new people, become friends with them and try and generate sales to all the girls and women who are present there.

This one is just a minor example of how communication and networking skills can be beneficial for entrepreneurs. It is interesting to note that many larger business affairs or also shaped in a very similar form. You might have seen this in movies or TV shows where one person is really doing their best to be invited or included in a certain birthday party or a certain event just to meet a certain person.

What Is Entrepreneurship For Kids?

In our efforts to provide education that is actually useful in the future for our children, we have established a certain path for the youngsters to acquire knowledge about business and entrepreneurship from a very young age. Our chief aim is to facilitate a comprehensive curriculum for kids two both enjoy receiving such as location and also be able to merge them with other studies, especially the STEM.

In entrepreneurship for kids, children will get to learn all the four necessary skills for entrepreneurship that were discussed earlier. They will establish an entrepreneurship mindset that allows them to think out of the box and get to create their own business ideas that are practical and cost-efficient.

They will also learn how to build up a team and how to communicate with their friends and acquaintances as leaders. In the meantime will also be developing other skills such as critical thinking and time management.

This entire process of entrepreneurship for kids is part of a bigger picture. We have tailored our STEM courses in a direction that is integrated with entrepreneurship skills. We have prepared countless hands-on project-based learning approaches in order to help our students to have a superior perspective in the future regarding their careers.

As an example of this, students who are doing robotics will learn about design, electronics, coding, and controlling their project robot. But this is not the end. We have also managed to squeeze in entrepreneurship skills within this course.

What the students will finally achieve is not just high-quality STEM knowledge but also the knowledge and experience to market, price, pitch sales and generate revenue as entrepreneurs and business owners in the future.

We have designed this process to be as attainable as possible. This means that students will be able to sell their products on platforms such as Amazon and Shopify right after doing a certain project.

Establishing and practicing such crucial skills from a young age will allow individuals to enter adulthood with more confidence. This will also help them to be able to get their head around the problems that are going to hit them in the future.

The goal of this entire process is to develop the mindset of merging a variety of ideas from an early age in children. Have you ever seen a certain person who happens to be extremely creative with all the different tools they have and all the different things they know? That is not always god-given talent. Science has shown that this can be learned and polished like any other skill including entrepreneurship.

In the end, our main objective is to provide high-quality education that is applicable in the future. Make sure to head over to our summer camp page and also check out our blogs and courses to learn more about Genius Camp and get your children to take the right course with us and secure their future!

Also, make sure to check out our blog on tech-entrepreneurship to learn more about the future of tech and how we have established plans for the future of our children!